Are you the kind of person who gets irked when you see a group of well groomed, tennis playing, sweater wearing, Starbucks drinking, social network consuming folks on their way to another eight hour work day in the office? Do you ever get disturbing visions about these people when you see them? Maybe you get violent and bloody visions where these people, who are seemingly well-to-do and functional citizens of society on the surface, are secretly carnivorous, blood thirsty heathens on the verge of physically tearing apart with tooth and nail at whoever stands in their way of gaining a cup of coffee or a scone? If you have not had this particular vision before but are interested in seeing it in the form of a short film shot on DV, then watch “Don’t Feed the Yuppies.”

Erikka Innes as producer, writer and actress, Grant Lyon as director, and Matthew Galvin as cinematographer, editor, music engineer, have made a dark and very campy rendition of what could have started as just a fleeting and innocent judgment anyone could muster about common, technology saturated, middle class people of today. But instead they have taken that idea and blown it up to make a very targeted criticism on modern obsessions. Social networking, the subculture of superficial office banter, daily technology and modern material lifestyles are poked fun at with heavy tongue-in-cheek humor and excessive gore.

Visually it is very bland. The sound effects are akin to science fiction films from the 50s. The subtle score is what we might hear in a Denny’s restaurant in the 80s somewhere in a pseudo-country suburb far from a metropolitan area. And technically it is no great work of art. But who cares. It somehow works. What comes across is a comical disdain for the modern material obsessions of so many people today. The movie is short, silly and to the point. And what’s great is that that point is very clear.

Mathew Szymanowski

(www.mathewszymanowski.com)

Watch "Don't Feed the Yuppies" on May 9th, 12pm, at the Regal Cinemas Riverfront Stadium as part of the Santa Cruz Film Festival.